Category Archives: regulation

A Brief Question

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…briefly answered.  Greg Ip, in his column on a putative currency war inflicted on us by the EU asked it.  He opened his piece with this:

When Federal Reserve policy makers gather in Washington this week [a couple days ago] to weigh cutting interest rates, a big part of their decision will already have been made—in Frankfurt.

Then he asked

How should the US protect its economy against possible threats from European economies?

The answer renders his opener irrelevant.  We best protect our economy—against far more than merely “possible threats from European economies”—with lower/no business taxes, minimal regulation, and better products freely traded. These are what underpin a long-term, fundamentally sound economy. Anything else is just glorified yield chasing and short-term machinations that no government, however loosely it is central-plan oriented, can hope to manage.

The Fed has no role in this; it needs only to set its benchmark rates to levels historically consistent with 2% inflation (its target inflation rate) and then sit down and be quiet.

Gun Registration (Control)

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The New Zealand government, enthusiastically led in this by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, intends to create a law requiring New Zealanders to register with the government the gun licenses they have and the guns they have.  This new…law…also is intended to make it harder to get, and keep, a gun license.

Other provisions of the thing include

  • establishment of new licensing for around 260 shooting clubs and ranges
  • expansion police authority to confiscate weapons if an individual shows (government defined) warning signs
  • require a separate license to purchase ammunition

Ardern, et al., claim that this thing is intended solely to “stop weapons falling into the wrong hands.”

Right.  Today, the “wrong hands” is terrorists and mass-shooters.  Sadly, “wrong hands” works out to whatever Government decides is wrong.

But, wait—this is New Zealand.  No worries.  No.  This is New Zealand today.  What about tomorrow’s government? Or the government the day after tomorrow?

These folks choose not to say what their limiting principle is.

Guns and Homicides

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According to The Fresno Bee:

More people are licensed to carry concealed weapons in Fresno County than any other county in California, according to data from the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office and the Fresno Police Department [17,400 licenses for a population of 994,000].

And

Orange County is next with 12,008 licenses [population 3.2 million].

And

Los Angeles County, with a population of more than 10 million, had only 424 permits as of last summer….

And

San Diego County [population 3.3 million] had fewer than 1,150, and Alameda County [population 1.7 million] had 186. The fewest licenses were reported in San Francisco County [population 883,000], where the state bureau reported that there were only two CCW licenses….

On the other hand, here are the homicide rates (2018 figures) for those counties:

Fresno County: 5.3 per 100,000

Orange County: 1.5 per 100,000

Los Angeles County: 5.5 per 100,000

San Diego County: 2.5 per 100,000

Alameda County: 5.5 per 100,000

San Francisco County: 5.3 per 100,000

High legal gun ownership doesn’t seem correlated at all with high homicide rates.  Quite the opposite: the trend is fewer killings as gun ownership increases.

Hypocrisy of the British Left

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Yes, ex-Prime Minister John Major claims himself a Conservative, but he’s acting more and more Left.  Boris Johnson, British Prime Minister wannabe and front-runner to replace the resigned Theresa May, has said that if needs be, he’ll prorogue Parliament to block an anti-no-deal Brexit vote, if a no-deal departure is necessary.

Prorogue: a temporary suspension of Parliament following petition of the Queen by her first minister—the Prime Minister—for permission to suspend Parliament and her granting that permission.  This use is unusual; prorogation is normally used for normal terminations of Parliamentary sessions; the term also describes the interval between that termination and the normal opening of the next session.

The former British Prime Minister John Major on Wednesday warned he would personally take legal action to stop any leader using a suspension of parliament to deliver a “no-deal” Brexit.

And yet, he threatens:

In order to close down parliament the prime minister would have to go to her Majesty the Queen and ask for her permission to prorogue. If her first minister asks for that permission, it is almost inconceivable that the queen will do anything other than grant it.
She is then in the midst of a constitutional controversy that no serious politician should put the queen in the middle of[.]

Thus, the hypocrisy: Major says he personally will precipitate that constitutional crisis with his own lawsuit to stop the process.

I for one would be prepared to go and seek judicial review.

Never mind that his case can only lose: as part of the Queen’s (any British monarch’s) Royal Prerogative, the power and the authority to prorogue belongs only to the monarch.  No British court can overrule her.

Hmm….

Federal Government and Home Lending

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Investors worry about the impact on home mortgage costs from the Trump administration’s efforts to reform Federal involvement in the business—for instance, cutting Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae loose from Federal controls and support.

The WSJ‘s subheadline of the article at the link sums up those investors’ worry:

[A]ny overhaul to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could reduce or eliminate the federal backstop

To which this investor—and home-owner and mortgage payer—says, “Yeah, and?”

There should be no Federal backstop at all, there should be no Federal involvement in this, or any other, industry at all.  Federal involvement only distorts the market, and Federal money, being the increased demand of additional and protected money, only drives up costs.